A Lunchroom Lesson
by mourningcloakanddaggers
Summary: "Please don't tell me you think girls pee through their vaginas." The boys of Magnolia High School are in for a very special lesson in human anatomy by none other than Lucy Heartfilia.
"Well at least girls have more room to pass kidney stones than guys do, since you have vaginas and all. It hurts for guys to pass them," Gray said as Natsu nodded along.

"Please, _please_ don't tell me you think that girls pee through their vaginas," Lucy begged them. She honestly didn't think she could handle it if they said that, yes, they had been under that impression.

"Uhhh…" Gray sheepishly scratched the back of his head. "Maybe…"

"Same…" Natsu muttered.

Lucy let her head fall against the lunch table with a loud smack. "I cannot believe you two think that," and she honestly couldn't. How do you get through sixteen years of life believing that girls pee through their vaginas, especially when you have so many female friends? "Girls pee through their urethras just like guys do. We don't have any more room than you do to pass kidney stones."

"Oh…" both boys looked extremely embarrassed with themselves.

"Don't be so surprised Lu," Levy said from her place next to her.

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked, unsticking her face from the lunch table.

"It's not that surprising they would be under that assumption since we have no human anatomy or sex ed. classes here. They've never had any kind of formal sex education," Levy explained. "We didn't all get to study in a huge city like you did for ten years, where it was a required class and everything was way more liberal. Most parents here don't want their kids to be educated in that sort of thing at all, but _especially_ not at a public school. I, myself, only know because I looked it up when I first started my period."

"I guess that's true…" it _did_ make sense, and it wasn't _such_ an outlandish idea for a guy to think because of the way their anatomy worked… Lucy suddenly sat up, coming to a conclusion. If the school wouldn't educate them, then _she_ would. People needed to know about this sort of stuff, and if the school wasn't going to do its job then she would do it for them.

"Luce?" Natsu questioned after she suddenly sat up, eyes wide with some kind of realization. He wasn't exactly sure what to make of it, and he was sure he really wanted to know either.

"If this stupid school won't teach you what you need to know, then I'll do it," she declared to the group. All of those who were following the conversation stared in horror as Lucy pulled out some paper and began to draw pretty decent diagrams of both the male and female reproductive systems in the middle of the school cafeteria. She labeled all of the organs and even put rough size estimates.

"Okay we'll start with the female reproductive system, then we'll do the male, then maybe some of the other organ systems," she announced loudly as she picked up the diagram and her pencil to point at the various parts.

"Wait, wait, wait," Gray protested. "I don't really want to learn about a girl's anatomy. It's not like it affects me at all, right?" He looked to the rest of the guys for back up.

"Yeah Bunny Girl, this stuff doesn't affect me at all so if you want to continue your lesson, I'm out of here," Gajeel grabbed his lunch tray and began to stand up.

"It affects you, because it affects us," Lucy told them, gesturing to herself and all the other girls at the table.

"That doesn't make any sense," Laxus said.

"Yes it does. Now all of you will sit back down, or I might just have to ask Erza and Mira to do something about it," Lucy told them calmly. Erza suddenly cracked her knuckles and Mira gave a cutesy giggle that fooled no one.

"A-aye..," the boys all stuttered while sitting back down.

"Okay, as I was saying, I'll start with the female anatomy. Do you all know the parts? Or do I have to explain them and their functions?" Lucy asked them while pointing at the diagram. She noted that almost none of the boys were actually looking at it, and they all looked uncomfortable. She would beat that out of them if she had too—if she had to put up with crudely drawn penises everywhere, then they could put up with her scientifically accurate diagrams while she was teaching them.

After a few moments of silence, Romeo began to stutter out, "umm… I-I don't know… umm… m-most…"

"That's okay, Romeo. I'm pretty sure most of the guys, and maybe even some of the girls don't know all of the parts, and are just too embarrassed to say otherwise." And given all the blushing faces and sheepish expressions of her friends, Lucy knew she had hit the nail on the head.

"Okay well, I'm sure you all know what the ovaries are, and what their function is, right?" Lucy looked at all the nods of confirmation she received. "Okay, then what about the uterus?" Again, she received nods of confirmation. "What about the fallopian tubes?" This time she got a few blank stares, males and females alike. "Okay the fallopian tubes are these here," she pointed to them on the diagram. "They connect the ovaries to the uterus, and, during ovulation, at least one egg will make its way from an ovary to the uterus, during which time they can be fertilized. If they are not by the time they reach the uterus, then the body will expel the egg and the uterine lining in a process called menstruation, commonly known as a 'period'. Any questions?"

"What exactly is 'ovulation'?" Wendy asked with a bright red blush on her face.

"Ovulation is the portion of the menstrual cycle just after the follicular phase when the egg is released from the ovary and travels down the fallopian tube," Lucy explained. "During this time most women will experience an increase in acne, irritability, mood swings, tiredness, bloating, and may also have tender breasts, all due to a change in hormones caused by the release of the egg. These symptoms constitute premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, and can last anywhere up to a week, and generally happen every cycle."

Her female friends (minus Wendy, because she hasn't started her period yet) were just nodding along to her whole spiel, because they knew. Her male friends, however, just looked shell-shocked, like they couldn't believe that girls has to go through all of that every month.

"That sounds horrible," Natsu commented.

"That's not even the worst part, just before and during menstruation, women also suffer from craps the majority of the time. It can range from mild to severe and sometimes we even have actual contractions, like you would have during labor," Lucy added.

"Women are so man…" Elfman muttered and the rest of the guys uttered their assent.

The girls just gave Elfman a look.

"And you have to go through this _every_ month?" Gray asked.

"Yes," they all answered. "It can be highly inconvenient," Erza tacked on and the rest all muttered their own assent.

After a few moments, Natsu spoke up, "if you don't mind me asking, what is the 'follicular phase' or whatever you mentioned earlier?"

"Well you know the ovaries house the eggs, but the eggs don't just sit in like a pile or anything. They reside in follicles which will begin to mature when a women's follicle stimulating hormone level increases at the start of her cycle. Multiple will begin to mature, and the one that matures first is the dominant follicle and its egg gets released into the fallopian tubes," Lucy told him.

"What happens to the others?" Lisanna asked.

"Well first I should say that occasionally multiple can mature fully, and that's how you get fraternal twins, triplets etc., but generally only one does. The rest just stop growing due to the influence of several different hormones."

"That sounds overly complicated," Gray grumbled.

"It might, but it is all necessary to make sure the eggs stay healthy in order to produce healthy offspring," Levy told him.

"That's true. Without the follicles, the eggs are more likely to get damaged, or the DNA housed inside them messed up, and that can lead to birth defects or infertility," Lucy added. "Women only have so many eggs, and species would die out quickly if women were unable to produce healthy babies due to damaged eggs."

"What do you mean 'women only have so many eggs'?" Natsu asked.

"Women are born with eggs inside her ovaries. They aren't like guys who can make as much sperm as they want," Lucy explained.

"Why can guys make as much sperm as they want but women can't make more eggs than what she's born with?" Gajeel asked.

"I thought you didn't even care about this?" Levy asked him.

"Shut up! If I'm being made to sit through this torture, I can ask whatever I want!" Gajeel said with a hint of a blush on his face.

"It's okay to be curious Gajeel. Although, as to the answer to your question, I can't give you a definite answer, because I don't think I was ever actually taught the why, just that it is like that. The thing that makes the most sense to me, is the fact that sperm does not last long in a women's body. A women's body is more acidic than a guy's and kills the sperm within about three days of entering her body. If men had only a limited amount of sperm, then it would be a lot harder to populate a species because the women might just kill all the sperm before it could impregnate them," Lucy said.

"A woman's body is more acidic than a man's? I never knew that," Mira said with a small pout. "I kinda wish I knew this stuff…"

"I'd say it's okay that you don't know this stuff, but really it isn't. People need to be educated about this kind of thing because otherwise something might be wrong and they wouldn't even know because they were never taught what was right. Or nothing's wrong but they might think that somethings wrong and then freak themselves out over it. A lot of parents don't want their kids educated in this sort of thing because they want their kids to stay pure or whatever for as long as they can keep them that way. But really, the only thing this information does is help people, and it's stupid that kids don't get taught this just because parents don't want their kids having sex. Which is also really stupid because they're going to do it even if they don't know everything about it, and that causes teen pregnancy and the transmittal of STDs and it's just…" Lucy sighed and rubbed her temples. "People really need to know this stuff and they don't."

No one knew what to say after that monologue, so they all waited for Lucy to start her lesson back up. Secretly, some of them were getting really into it, and really wanted Lucy to continue, but they were too embarrassed to ask her themselves.

"Okay now where was I… Oh yeah! A woman's acidity! Yes, a woman is more acidic than a man and—"

"RIIIIIIIIIIING!" went the bell signaling the end of lunch and the cue to head off to fifth period.

"I wasn't done with my lesson yet!" Lucy screeched to the ceiling. "Ugh fine, we'll just continue this tomorrow!"

The rest grumbled but were secretly glad she would teach them more.

 **A/N** : This is inspired by a very real conversation I had with some of my friends at lunch one time. We were for some reason I don't remember talking about passing kidney stones and one of my male friends made the same comment that Gray made in this fic. My female friend and I had to explain to him and another male friend that, no, girls do not pee through their vaginas, and, yes, they have urethras. I didn't go into all the stuff then as I did in this fic, and I wasn't even going to go into that much detail in this fic either, but what I intended as a 500-word blurb turned into a 2000-word one-shot. Whoops.


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